The Peasant and the Crescent

Luckily the door was too small for a decked out Northman to enter in a defensive posture, his left arm got stuck trying to bring the shield on. Hobbie, the family pig, leapt forward and butted the man in his unprotected groin. The Northman backed out of the doorway cursing, doubling over in pain while his companion laughed hysterically. The animals then fled the house in terror.

"Shut up, Ali!" He snapped in a language similar to Alfred's own.

Alfred didn't take the time to appreciate their mutual intelligibility as he jumped toward the taller man and thrust his sword out, hoping to land it in the invader's face.

It glanced off slightly from the metal ring of the Northman's eye protector, and sunk into his eye, causing liquid to squirt out. He screamed horribly, but Alfred drove the sword point in further before he could recoil in pain, piercing his orbit and entering his skull.

The Northman's heavy mass became limp, and he slumped forward onto his knees, the sword still stuck in his head and held firm in Alfred's hands. The laughter of his companion behind him turned to bitter rage, and he charged forwards, stepping over his fallen comrade into the house.

Alfred struggled to dislodge his sword, but it was stuck in there like Escalibur. The second Northman deftly hurled himself through the narrow space between the door frame and the corpse until he was between Alfred and his sword.

The Northman's hands were mid-shaft on his weapon, and he quickly jabbed and thrust the blade-end in the air around him, forcing Alfred to back off. The double-handed axe lacked the momentum to deliver a killing blow, but it was dangerous enough to cut off Alfred's fingers when swung, and break all his teeth if thrust forward.

Alfred moved into the corner of his hovel and picked up a small knife. It was all he had to defend himself. His wife and mother whimpered in fear for his life. The intruder closed the distance liked a predator ready to pounce. He had enough roof above him now to swing his axe in its full glory. He brought his arms back quickly, and sent the blade chopping down.

He missed, smashing open a pot of wedding mead, spilling its expensive contents onto the floor, giving Alfred an idea.

Alfred ducked to his right, followed closely behind by the Northman's axe. It bore down, smashing his family table into kindling as Alfred jumped back to the left, landing on the ground.

Sprawled on his back, Alfred was finally easy prey for the Viking, who wished to end this fight quickly. He paced forward, bringing his axe up again for the final blow.

That's when Alfred lobbed a small jar at his head, smashing it into shards against his helmet. The Northman cursed as his vision was blurred with mead, backing away so he could wipe his eyes open with his hand. Before he could even see, Alfred's father darted forth from the shadows and brought his axe down low, severing his unguarded leg at the knee.

The invader howled in agony as he collapsed on his unsupported side, slumped against the wall of the house. Alfred pounced on him with his knife and jammed it underneath his chin, ending his screaming swiftly. It was not done out of mercy, for Alfred hated the Northmen with all his guts, but out of expediency and haste, for it wouldn't be long before others came to his hovel.

Alfred shot a glance back at his family, doing a rapid mental count. His eyes immediately focused on Elfgifu's bloody hands in panic.

"Art thou wounded?" He asked, voice almost cracking as he rushed over to her side.

"No, Alfred. I'm safe. We're all safe, thanks to you," she said, shivering. She held up Alfred's sword with her other hand. She and his mother had removed it from the first corpse, covering themselves with his gore.

"Not for long lest we take flight. There's no one outside, yet. Come, hurry!" He instructed his whole family. They leapt over the body in the doorway and swiftly ran in the direction of Elfgifu's family home. She felt a deep relief when she realized the direction they were going. Luckily, her parents lived further away from the River Trent, which was in all likelihood the waterway that the Northmen used to get here.

They ran alongside, but not directly on, the southwesterly Roman road. It was too illuminated to use without immediate detection by friend and foe. The four trampled through the barley fields, hoping none of their neighbors would be upset if they ever made it through this incursion alive. Their rustling was heard by a group of men.

"Halt! Who's there? Show thineself or we'll loose our arrows upon thee!" cried a familiar voice.

"Leofric!" Elfgifu yelled in joy as she leapt up from the barley field. Alfred and the rest stood up in relief, revealing themselves.

"Sister!" The towheaded boy yelled. He was only fourteen; his helmet was still too big for his still-white head and his sword arm was aching from use. Both families reunited in a warm embrace. Alfred looked at the other men in the host, all friends and family. Some of the men looked back, envious that he had his family intact.

"Swithun!" She yelled in panic as she saw her older brother leaning against a friend. He was clasping a deep axe bite that ran from his collarbone to his breast. The loss of blood already left him weak and wan. Tears immediately ran down her cheeks as she butted her head against his other breast.

"Why? Why?!" She wailed.

"Sister, I'll live through the night. Thou must follow me down the Roman road and find our mother."

"Just our mother?? Where is our father?"

Swithun looked up at the sky, and pressed her close to him with his good arm. She gave a pleading look at his face, before bursting into tears again, accepting the truth.

"Athelstan was a good man, and a long friend of mine. We will bury him with his fathers once this dread night has passed. Let me and Alfred join you and the fyrd, whilst thou leadst mine wife and daughter to safety."

"'Tis good, for I hath only followed the fyrd to find you and mine sister. Now I can guide them to our safehold."

Swithun left the man he was leaning on, and hobbled over to his sister and mother-in-law, who took on his weight. He turned his face to Alfred, telling him before departing:

"I'll keep them safe, Alfred. Watch my brother, and drive the Northmen from Ludham!"

"I will, Swithun!" Alfred yelled, already strapping on a spare shield and gambeson. His father stood on his left, and Leofric on his right, relieved to have more kin with him on his first battle.

--(8-X)--

The Dunham fyrd held valiantly, but they were no match for seasoned warriors with battle experience. They managed to take down three foes before being surrounded and hobbled to submission.

The Danes only took the young and healthy. Alfred too, had to suffer the loss of a father that night. He glared bitterly at the bearded captain, his eyes like smoldering blue coals. He was too tired to struggle against his restraints any longer. He and his fellow captives slept kneeling on the banks of the river Trent while the gloating Northmen celebrated their victory raucously and boisterously.

Alfred and his fellow villagers were woken up several times during the night by the arrival of new war parties and their booty. He desperately scanned the crowd for his family, haunted both by their absence, which meant they might be dead, or the chance of their arrival, which would mean they were alive, but captured. The back of his mind held out hope that they were safe and well, all the while he kept looking until he couldn't stay awake any longer.

His respite was brief when a rough kick and the morning light forced him awake.

"Get on the boat, kuffar," cried a gruff voice. Every word spoken by the heathen was faintly comprehensible except the last. It leapt off his tongue with an even more foreign and sinister presence than the cousin-words of Norse. It punctuated the air with a dangerous and otherworldly miasma.

The Northmen had filled up on slaughtered animals and were rested and ready to sail to some foul clime in Terra Incognita. Alfred and dozens of other captives were led, arms bound, over the longship's shallow oarport, decorated with round shields emblazoned with various synthesized pagan and Islamic imagery, the latter mostly simple scrawlings in kufic script.

They were packed into a pile near the ship's mast, next to the stolen gold and silver of their homes, and pilfered clothes, iron tools, and whatever else the foul raiders considered valuable. Little did the Englishmen know that they were their captors' most prized booty, for there existed on the continent a flourishing slave trade.

The caliph of al-Uwrubba, or Europe, needed thousands of men to row his galleys against his enemies to the East, the Abbasids. Few escaped death for longer than ten years, whether from want of rest, from disease, from murder, shipwreck, slaughter in battle against pirates, or torture at the hands of a victorious enemy.

Others were made to work in plantations throughout the Mediterranean, a brutal recall of Roman-era latifundia, though the estates in North Uwrubba had small accents of chivalry and humanity.

Women, of course, were prized chiefly as sex slaves and concubines. Their fortune depended on the wealth and civility of the effendi who owned them. This was the most lurid and dreaded aspect of Islamic civilization to the people in the few remaining Christian lands, and as such, even Alfred knew what would happen to Elfgifu if she didn't escape in time.

Alfred sat amongst his fellow prisoners with a sense of resignation. He had enough time last night to worry and regret and hate his life. Outside the boat were a couple of playful young river otters, swimming and floating on logs. Alfred watched the carefree creatures with envy.

Soon, his boat pushed off the banks of the Trent, and the stoic Northmen heaved their oars to the rhythm of the drum.

The fleet of agile ships maneuvered its way downstream to the great Humber estuary. Gulls and other seabirds flapped their wings and cried in the air. The air became acrid with the smell of sea spray and sand. The pure river water mixed with the foamy brine of the sea, and one could spot fish darting beneath the clear surface. The white birds flapped near the shore like the souls of fallen Englishmen, lingering around their old homes before ascending to a clime beyond the grey clouds. The beauty of the landscape tore through English hearts like a knife, as it would be the last time any of them would see home again. Many still had surviving family, others didn't; it wasn't clear whose grief was worse.

The fleet sailed South, maintaining careful distance from the coastline but close enough to keep it in sight in case they needed to make landing again. Alfred hoped that English war boats would spot them and sally out to their rescue, but the crafty Northmen and their swift keeled boats could easily outrace them on the open water.

Alfred and his fellow captives sat huddled for weeks on the ships. The Danes kept them alive with scraps of blackened bread and entrails, and just enough drinking water to bide their thirst but never quench it.

Whenever the Northmen needed a mental reprieve from the monotonous task of rowing and sailing on the open sea, they would take out their bone flutes, their panpipes, their mouth-harps and strings and start to play. The first time they did so, the familiarity of their music left a considerable impression on their captives.

They played their instruments (mainly simply woodwinds, only a few could play the strings, and many had lost fingers in battle) without vocal accompaniment. In stark contrast to Christians whose worship was replete with chants and psalms, the Norse were never well known for their singing, despite their rich oral traditions. It was the absence of Norse or Arabic vocals that allowed the English to relax slightly during these brief respites, and sense a small touch of humanity in their captors.

The rest of the time spent voyaging was eerily quiet. The Northmen had long since sobered up from their victory, and were solemnly focused on the task of bringing their spoils to market. They would have plenty of time for boasting and self-aggrandizing in Dar-al-Islam, back in civilization, where naive ears could hear tales of heroic exploits for the first time. On the ship, there were too many fellow Vikings who could fact-check.

The trip only took a few days, and the Vikings beached at night to rest, taking turns guarding their prisoners on the ships. At the earliest break of dawn, the voyage would resume again. The sound of waves constantly slapping against the wooden hull of his ship drove Alfred halfway to madness.

Soon seagulls were spotted again as the fleet entered the mouth of the river Seine, across the Channel. The Danes had to row harder to fight the Northeasterly current and navigate the tight estuaries, but their ships managed to deftly enter and maneuver the Seine upriver for over two hundred miles.

Long before they entered the city, it was possible for those on the ships to see the city of Paris, now known as Barisiyya, from the river Seine. Tall, golden-domed masjids and candle-shaped minarets decorated the nine hills of Paris, now poetically referred to as the Nine Teeth of the Prophet. The boats sailed through the city river-gates, through the marshlands and into the docks where commerce began in earnest. The city was matched only by Al-Lyanza (Orleans) in the former land of France in size and urbanization. Spices from India, incense from the Levant, cotton and papyrus from Egypt, ivory from West Africa, and Saxon and Wendish slaves were traded freely in the great open-air bazaars.

The Northmen grinned in anticipation of riches and the great goods of the famous Parisian bazaars. There they could regale each other with their great war-deeds over coffee and fine delicacies, fed to them by prostrating servant girls whom they would bed in 'temporary marriages'. This was the only place where one could be so expertly milked by a slave-girl's silky hole. It was not lost to the Norsemen that many of Barisiyya's beautiful, flax-headed slaves also came from their homelands, but nationalistic sentiment was never known to be strong among Scandinavians, especially those whose pockets were lined heavy with gold.

Alfred looked with tired eyes at the lively metropolis around him. Never had he been in a city before, let alone one with a hundred thousand souls. He never saw a Saracen before, either, though there weren't that many here, it seemed. Most of the bearded, slippered and turbaned men milling about were blue of eye and blond of beard, some of whom bearing a disturbing resemblance to English faces. And, though he couldn't see the women underneath their veils and gowns, many of them probably looked like Elfgifu.

No! Alfred squeezed his eyes and berated himself. None of these women could ever match his wife in beauty or goodness. She alone was anchored to him, and the immeasurable distance separating them tugged viciously at his heart.

And whatever kinship he may have had to these people did nothing to shake off the queer foreign-ness of the landscape. The summer breeze that wafted through the high, airy domes and delicately marbled arches was not an English one so it failed to warm his heart. He was in enemy lands, separated from the Devil by Hell alone.

The Viking captain divided the stolen gold and silver equally amongst his men (excepting a tenth share for himself), allowing some to enjoy the city's pleasures while he and his veterans would do the dirty but lucrative business of selling their slaves.

"Time to go, my cattle," he sang, his ears already ringing with the sound of coin.

The English stepped off the boats, still restrained, onto the wooden piers. Their legs were weak and numb like newborn colts, but the threat of the lash kept them walking. They were all tied to a single rope, and led by the fearsome captain down the crowded streets of Barisiyya.

Their ragged and motley appearance didn't draw anyone's attention. There were no young women among their group, and it was most likely they'd be sold off as galley fodder. Some street children hurled rocks at the slaves whom they despised as kuffar. The Northmen could only respond to this offense on their property with amusement.

Throngs of bizarrely-dressed Frenchmen and Moors busily ran around the dirty streets. It would have reminded him of Nottingham except that there were no pigs digging through the dirt. All the tongues of the Old World filled the air, dominated by an Arabic-Romantic lingua franca.

The captain spoke with some merchants and arranged for his 'wares' to be displayed in the Southwestern slave market of Barisiyya. Here, they weren't even free from the foul stench of the marsh. However, there were some visiting noblemen who were in search of domestic servants and farmhands. A far better fate than dying in the dank, salty holds of the Caliph's galleys.

Whatever filthy and worn sackcloth the Englishmen had was stripped away so that prospective buyers could examine their bodies, as if they were buying cattle.

Alfred raised his eyes to the sky, praying to God Elfgifu was safe at home in Nottinghamshire.

--Meanwhile--

Elfgifu dragged her feet hesitantly along the dirt road. She and six other women were quite possibly the only Christian, and certainly the only English, faces around. She clung tightly to her modest garb, ignoring the hundreds of filthy eyes which were committing adultery in their hearts. Even bow-legged lepers sitting in their own filth raised their eyes to mentally undress her as she and the other prisoners marched past.

Luckily the captain of her ship was stern and devoted to profit. Not as much as a single Northman laid hands on her or any of the other women captives. They were so free from molestation that Elfgifu wondered if the Viking's reputation for rapine was exaggerated.

These other heathens, however, were nowhere near as restrained. Though the captives were accompanied by armed guard, Elfgifu's heart pounded in fear with each step.

Finally, they came to a corner market for slaves, a small former Greek theatre converted for daily buying and selling. It was at the foot of a small sloping hill within Barisiyya, and the slaves marched down the walkway between the terraced steps, or seats. This was a more exclusive market than the one for male slaves. As such, it was closed off to only men of circumstance, reputable vendors and customers. The seven Englishwomen joined twelve other slaves at the base of the theater, the orchestra, standing in a small circular space for an excited audience.

A mother and her two daughters huddled together on a wooden box, linked by chains around their wrists. The heathens would not even spare the young girls the indignity of nakedness. They clung to their mother like frightened kittens as lecherous hands "examined" their firm buttocks and milky white thighs. Each pinch and slap drew noisy complaints and protests from the girls, while the mother could only look on in outraged silence.

The soft, flowing robes of the men did nothing to conceal their erections. The mother looked on wearily at the filthy, circumcised cocks straining against knitted fabric, pointing at her young girls' behinds like curved daggers. Though older and more weathered, she herself drew their attention, and ungentle hands cupped and squeezed her fat, pendulous suckers.

This was only secondary to the attention paid to her virgin daughters, however: Each girl's value was probably four or five times that of hers. Her wide, dimpled arse didn't draw a man's gaze for long away from her daughters' smooth peach bottoms.

A wealthy gentleman spoke some persuasive words in Frankish Arabic to the stern-faced Varangian, who pried one of the girls away for closer inspection. Between his white turban and aquiline nose, the man's commanding brown eyes gazed down at his quarry and seized its frightened blue ones. He swiftly shoved a bit of lead into the girl's mouth, prying it open as his fingers darted in afterwards. The little English girl gagged as the intruding digits roamed her mouth as they pleased.